books.google.com - Story of Holden Caulfield with his idiosyncrasies, penetrating insight, confusion, sensitivity and negativism. The hero-narrator of "The Catcher in the Rye" is an ancient child of sixteen, a native New Yorker named Holden Caulfield. Through circumstances that tend to preclude adult, secondhand description,...https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Catcher_in_the_Rye.html?id=j--EMdEfmbkC&utm_source=gb-gplus-shareThe Catcher in the Rye

The Catcher in the Rye

Story of Holden Caulfield with his idiosyncrasies, penetrating insight, confusion, sensitivity and negativism. The hero-narrator of "The Catcher in the Rye" is an ancient child of sixteen, a native New Yorker named Holden Caulfield. Through circumstances that tend to preclude adult, secondhand description, he leaves his prep school in Pennsylvania and goes underground in New York City for three days. The boy himself is at once too simple and too complex for us to make any final comment about him or his story. Perhaps the safest thing we can say about Holden is that he was born in the world not just strongly attracted to beauty but, almost, hopelessly impaled on it. There are many voices in this novel: children's voices, adult voices, underground voices -- but Holden's voice is the most eloquent of all. Transcending his own vernacular, yet remaining marvelously faithful to it, he issues a perfectly articulated cry of mixed pain and pleasure. However, like most lovers and clowns and poets of the higher orders, he keeps most of the pain to, and for, himself. The pleasure he gives away, or sets aside, with all his heart. It is there for the reader who can handle it to keep.

User ratings

LibraryThing Review

... something exciting would happen but nothing ever did. In fact, the ending was quite anti-climactic. The main character Holden got on my nerves, to be honest ... Read full review

Written with Salinger's usual excellent prose. - LibraryThing

LibraryThing Review

DRFP - July 31, 2011 - LibraryThing

... Written with Salinger's usual excellent prose. It makes a nice comparison to the author's other story, Franny, which is perhaps a slightly more mature look at ... Read full review

Even the writing bothered me a bit. - LibraryThing

LibraryThing Review

Rachissy - January 28, 2011 - LibraryThing

... didn't see what made it worthy of all the praise it gets. Even the writing bothered me a bit. I get that it was written as if Holden was thinking it, but ... Read full review

I was really drawn into Salinger's writing style. - LibraryThing

LibraryThing Review

torrietreason - August 3, 2010 - LibraryThing

... I was really drawn into Salinger's writing style. Although it was very literal and explained nearly every little detail that Holden did, I thought it added ... Read full review

The prose is minimalist. - LibraryThing

LibraryThing Review

cmscott - November 2, 2010 - LibraryThing

... the transition to phoniness is complete after childhood ends. The prose is minimalist. Very little description. Lots of movement. Hyper-realism. Just the ... Read full review

I do not enjoy open endings. - LibraryThing

LibraryThing Review

MichelleL_15 - June 27, 2012 - LibraryThing

... Holden. But I am reading to see what the writer can come up with. I do not enjoy open endings. Holden was a terrible main character. He was whiney and there was ... Read full review

LibraryThing Review

User Review - mariannelee_0902 - LibraryThing

EDIT: I gave this book 3 stars, because as I was analyzing how I felt while reading the book, there were some things that I actually liked, hence the 3 stars ("I liked it"). Nevertheless, Holden ... Read full review

LibraryThing Review

User Review - E.A.Walsh - LibraryThing

I read this book for school about, I don't know, over 10 years ago. I read it cover to cover in about two days, so basically over one of my precious weekends. I was so intrigued with the book, and at ... Read full review

References to this book

About the author (1964)

J. D. Salinger was born in New York City on January 1, 1919. He attended Manhattan public schools, Valley Forge Military Academy in Pennsylvania, and three colleges, but received no degrees. He joined the U. S. Army in 1942 and fought in the D-Day invasion at Normandy as well as the Battle of the Bulge, but suffered a nervous breakdown and checked himself into an Army hospital in Germany in 1945. In December 1945, his short story I'm Crazy was published in Collier's. In 1947, his short story A Perfect Day for Bananafish was published in The New Yorker. Throughout his lifetime, he wrote more than 30 short stories and a handful of novellas, which were published in magazines and later collected in works such as Nine Stories, Franny and Zooey, and Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction. The Catcher in the Rye, published in 1951, was his only novel. His last published story, Hapworth 16, 1924, appeared in 1965. He spent the remainder of his years in seclusion and silence. He died of natural causes on January 27, 2010 at the age of 91.